ken skrev 2012-10-09 17.22:
Hello, Lars Hellström
I was thinking of using OpenMath as a command language to access the CAS,
not as a standard for encoding mathematical objects
I see. Yes, that would be trickier.
in the CAS.
It needn't be /in/ the CAS (indeed, a mature CAS would internally often use
various optimised representations for mathematical objects that can be quite
different from what OM has defined), but rather for allowing two different
pieces of software both working with not entirely trivial mathematical
objects to talk to each other.
Like a
explained to Alberto I was think of using openMath to abstract the CAS I use
from the rest of my application so I could change the CAS. It seems like it
is turning out to be a lot of work and may not be worth it.
It could still be feasible if there only is some specific domain of
computations that you want the CAS to do for you, but it is certainly
starting to look difficult.
Are you saying
that openMath is better suited for use inside a CAS and not for a way to
pass things between different applications or components?
No, OM is very much about making /communication/ feasible. As mentioned
above, a CAS may internally employ quite different representations.
So I am confused about this arcsin thing. Does not arcsin always output the
same thing for a given input, so why would anyone ever want to define it
differently? If I enter arcsin(1) into a calculator I expect to always get
back pi/2 rad or 90 deg. The unites and whether it is exact would need to be
defined but they are all equivalent and I should be able to get it in any
form needed and change between any of them as I like depending on the CAS,
so that is out side the definition of arcsin.
The catch is that not everyone makes the same choices when one gets to the
edge cases in definitions of the elementary functions, and (as I recall it)
there is a classical example that at least one of the inverse
trigonometrical functions (it might have been arccos or arccot rather than
arcsin, though) had slightly different definitions in different CASes,
because it was taken as the inverse of restrictions to different intervals
of the underlying trigonometric function. Much of the text in e.g.
http://www.openmath.org/cd/transc1.xhtml
serve specifically to nail down exactly which of the plausible definitions
of these elementary functions should be taken as authorative for the symbols
defined there.
That brings up another question. Is there any way to specify unites in
(I suspect you mean "units", which is plural of the noun "unit". "Unites" is
present tense of the verb "unite".)
openMath. That becomes a big thing if physics? If I ever get that far (I
doubt I will) I would like my calculator to be smart enough that it would
change everything to si units before solving an equation where units are
specified.
Here you may be in luck, because it has been one of the more active areas in
recent years. If you take a look through the list archives
(http://openmath.org/pipermail/om/), you will surely find more information.
Some of it may be concerned mostly with linked data interoperability,
though. Also, you might be interested in
http://www.openmath.org/cd/contrib/cd/SI_BaseUnits1.xhtml
http://www.openmath.org/cd/contrib/cd/SI_NamedDerivedUnits1.xhtml
Lars Hellström
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